IJCAI International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence

This paper establishes a framework that hierarchically integrates symbolic and sub-symbolic representations in an architecture for cognitive robotics.We formalise the architecture abstractly as nodes in a hierarchy. Each node is a sub-task that maintains its own belief-state of part of the world and generates behaviour. As nodes can use different languages, the architecture supports hybrid representations.An instantiation is developed; with one node using a concurrent multi-tasking teleo-reactive program, another node embedding a physics simulator to provide common-sense spatial knowledge, and finally, lower-level nodes for sensor processing and robot control. A demonstration entails a real humanoid robot building towers of blocks, even with human help and hindrance